Last year we ran several promotions to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund. This ran for 4 months and in total $800 was donated to the WWF. Following this I now delighted to announce the launch of a brand new charity project!

The charity GM will be supporting over the coming months is called Trees for the Future. They provide technical knowledge along with planting materials to developing communities so that they can return their degraded lands and struggling farms back to sustainable production. Through their network of technicians and volunteers they can reach remote areas worldwide and gives local people the knowledge and ability to rehabilitate their environment.

Since 1988, Trees for the Future has helped thousands of communities in Central America, Africa, and Asia improve their livelihoods and their environment by planting nearly 65 million trees. I have posted their video here, which explains about the work they do and how they are tackling global problems hands on.

To help support this organisation GM are making donations to Trees for the Future to cover the cost of planting trees. How are we doing this? In a corner of the Computer Games forum we have a Reviews forum. The aim is turn this section into helpful resource for those looking for feedback and unbiased opinions on games in the download section. So everytime a member posts a review in the Reviews forum on any game downloaded from GM, we will make a donation to plant a tree. Easy.

Post a review and you have planted a tree!

Reviews do not have to pages long but I would expect around 100 - 300 words to give adequate details to explain the game and tell us what you think of it. When making a post please use the name of the game as your topic title.

All games in the download section include a free trial period, so you can freely download any game that sounds interesting, play it, post a review and then un-install it. Of course if you like a game and want to buy that would be great, but it's not necessary in order to take part in this project.

This will project will initially run for August and if we receive a decent response then I will gladly keep it running for as long as possible. So have a bit of fun with some free downloads, tell us what you think of them and you will be directly supporting an important and worthwhile charity, making a difference to people lives in remote parts of the world and you will also be helping GM grow into a useful resource.

i'd love to help out with this and there are a lot of great games, but i cannot download any of them...guess it's because i have a mac...i'll keep watching and will help with the next campaign if i can...good thing you're doing, here, steve...

No worries Mary, you have the whole of August and I'm just glad that someone has got the ball rolling. Deb has also posted a couple today (thanks Deb!) so we are off to a good start. Fingers crossed, we will get a response from other members who perhaps would not normally post and this will be a success.

You are correct bfs, the games in the download section are for PC's only. However, if you are wanting to take part I can PM you a list of around 250 titles from the download section that are also available for the Mac, complete with links to download the free trial versions. (This also applies to any other members who have a Mac and would like to take part). Just drop me a PM asking for the list of Mac games.

I have been working on integrating these Mac games into a new download category but haven't quite figured the best way of doing it yet. So in the meantime I'm happy to give anyone access to these Mac games for the purpose of posting a review, as the more people we have participating the better.

It's great that would like to take part Harri, but autobahn is a game from the arcade and the reviews forum is for games from the downloads section.

You are welcome to post you views and share tips about any arcade game in the main computer games forum, but to take part in this project you will need to checkout a game from the downloads section. There are plenty of driving games to download and it won't cost you anything to play the free trial versions. If you have any concerns about downloading a game please do ask.

I don't think I can do the reveiw thing. My husband as forbidden me from buying anymore games for the next wee while. I made the mistake of going into a used game store one night. Apparently, even if they are really cheap because they're used does not mean I can buy more then one Ooops!!!
Unless of course we can post reviews about nintendo ds games, then I'm covered. LOL.